Members of Doctors Without Borders put on protective gear at the isolation ward of a hospital last week in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. Getty Images

Written by

Marc Siegel

Back in the late 1980s, when AIDS was first emerging, I was a resident in the medical trenches at Bellevue Hospital, drawing blood from patients and sometimes sticking myself with needles. Medicine was a calling back then and doctors in training were expected to take risks when necessary.

We put intravenous lines in drug abusers with scarred up veins who were suffering from heart or AIDS-related infections. We came to know the statistics like our own telephone numbers -- 1 out of 250 needle sticks from a patient with HIV infection converted the health care worker to HIV positive. Some of us even ...